Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to an electronic timepiece using stepping motors and more particularly to an electronic timepiece including two stepping motors, one for driving at least a second-hand and the other for driving at least a hour-hand.
In a general electronic timepiece with three hands that is a second-hand, a minute-hand and an hour-hand, these hands are driven by a single stepping motor. In such an electronic timepiece with three hands, the so-called electromagnetic time correction system, in which indicating positions of the hands are corrected by driving a stepping motor in accordance with a time correcting signal has not been adopted, because the system requires too long time for correction. However, the said electromagnetic correction system is inevitably adopted in order to realize analog electronic timepieces having additional functions besides mere time indicating function, such as a watch with a function for correcting difference in time and a watch with an alarming function in which the hour/minute-hands for indicating time serves also as a setting pointer of an alarm.
Recently, there has been proposed an electronic timepiece which has two stepping motors, one for driving the second-hand and the other for driving the hour/minute-hand to implement analog electronic timepieces having various functions.
For such a timepiece, since the second-hand and the hour/minute-hands each can independently be driven, the indicating position of the second-hand or the hour/minute-hands can electromagnetically be corrected in a short time.
In such a timepiece, however, since each of two stepping motors is independently driven, there is also a possibility that even if the hour/minute-hands should stop for some cause, only the second-hand may continue its motion. In such a case, there is full of danger that a user of the timepiece may falsely assume that the timepiece is normally running and hence he may inadvertently mistake a false time indication for a correct time indication.